Editor's note: Kip Creel is the president and founder of StandPoint, a Tucker, Ga., research company.

In marketing research, we read a lot about navigating the front end of innovation. One client calls this place a “simmering pot of ideas, opportunities, opinions, politics and fear.” Too many organizations wind up in this mind-set because little to no foundational work has been completed. Project teams find themselves splashing around in this giant pot trying to pull together customer needs, ideas and concepts. Teams struggle on where to focus. There’s a lot of activity but few results. What is going wrong?

More often than not, this lack of focus is caused by the absence of clear, strategic guardrails. Proper scoping of an innovation assignment – the front of the front end, so to speak – is vitally important.

Here are some recent examples:

Client: “We want to introduce some new-to-world innovations to our market.”
Vendor: “That’s great. How do you reconcile this with your stated corporate strategy of being a fast follower?”
Client: “That’s a really good question.”

Client: “We’re extending our brand and would like some new concepts in this adjacent category.”
Vendor: “Fine. How stretchable is your brand into this adjacent category?”
Client: “We don’t know.”

Client: “We have some product concepts we’d like you to evaluate with our customers.”
Vendor: “These concepts don’t seem connected. Who exactly is the target customer?”
Client: [Silence.]

Before you embark on the journey of identifying needs and generating concepts, please consider what I call the front of the front end of innovation. Effective navigation assumes that guardrails have been established around the following:

  • playing field;
  • brand latitudes;
  • macro industry/customer trends;
  • target customer/segments;
  • competition; and
  • category needs.

Playing field. This is an understanding of what your organization does better than anyone else – it encompasses core competencies and core capabilities and can be tough to sort out. Define your playing field too narrowly and you may miss opportunities on the periphery or limit innovation possibilities. Define it too broadly and the innovation team may be unfocused or under-resourced.

We have a client who manufactures components for commercial airframes. New unit growth can come from two areas: getting more dollars per manufactured airframe or by broadening the playing field to include new transportation. Given the options, serious discussion was given to expanding into other industries. Another option was to stick with the current playing field, innovate for the current target consumer and include products and services for purchase before, during and after the manufacture of the airframe. The latter two options were equally viable and could yield dramatically different results.

Brand latitudes. If product or service innovation is being done in the context of a specific brand, it is vital to understand the limits of the brand. Let’s go back to our airframe components manufacturer. The company’s brand equity research suggested its core brands were not known and valued outside of aviation. Innovation in other industries was viable but the cost and time of brand-building needed to be considered when scoping the assignment. On the flip side, the existing target customer was very accepting of the brand broadening its offerings.

Macro industry/customer trends. Understanding externalities and where a target market is heading is an important input to innovation-scoping. The aviation client had a strong track record in adapting its products for airframes fabricated with composite metals. Its research of other transportation categories suggested that as new composites were created, the aviation industry acted as the early adopter. These technologies then slowly migrated to other forms of transportation like vehicles, trains and ships. A strategic option was to adapt the company’s current products and apply them to other modes of transportation. In effect, it was aligning its innovation process to the future needs of adjacent industries. End customers were changing their behavior and buying preferences based on these externalities. Ensuring that future concepts are aligned to broader trends is very important.

Target customer/segments. As we all know, a deep understanding of the target customer is paramount to innovation success. A well-defined playing field, however, is a prerequisite to defining target customers. For this client example, let’s presume the innovation mandate was to stick with the playing field of commercial airframes but understand the customer before, during and after the manufacture of the airframe. This assumes a broad understanding of the various roles in the value chain of airframe manufacturing: engineering, procurement, assembly and surface prep and painting. The combination of playing field and target customers fundamentally changes who must be involved in any voice-of-customer study.

Competition. In B2B innovation, the evidence is clear on why new products fail. The biggest culprit is that the proposed concept does not have a clear point of difference or strong value proposition. Ideas and concepts generated in a vacuum of competitive understanding are pointless. Imagine the complexity of a competitive analysis without a well-defined playing field and target customer. I’ve seen it far too often. Innovation teams get excited about the brainstorming process but fail to filter ideas and preliminary concepts through a competitive understanding.

Before you proceed with an innovation assignment, make sure you fully understand where to investigate (playing field) and who to investigate (target customers). If the assignment is for a particular brand, make sure you understand brand latitudes well in advance.

Category needs. Before fieldwork, study the target market and understand the macro trends that are driving consumer behavior so that you can put their feedback into context. While talking to the customer to understand their needs and pain points, get a competitive perspective and identify how certain competitors are and are not meeting needs.

Establish these guardrails early on and make sure that senior management understands how this innovation assignment is (or is not) aligning with the organization’s overall strategy. We all know that B2B research is costly, time-consuming and risky. Proceeding without these guardrails in place only increases your risk – and your odds of getting heartburn down the road.